Half Rook, half Entente, huh?” I whispered as I leaned over South just as the sun began to dawn, resisting the urge to kiss his cheek. “You just look like South to me.”
South turned over and began to snore softly in response, as if unconsciously agreeing with me.
“So much is happening, and I think you can feel every minute of it. I wish you couldn’t. I wish you could just rest. And at the exact same time, I want to shake you awake so you could help me figure it all out. Pretty selfish, huh?”
I adjusted his covers one last time and began walking toward the door, when I heard a girl’s voice in my head as plain as if it were my own thoughts. But it wasn’t my voice; it was someone else’s. And it was so very mad. I wish that they had never come here. I wish . . . I wish . . . I wish . . . , the voice insisted.
The voice was familiar. It was Cinderella’s.
I started for her room when I heard the sound of someone working in the kitchen. I opened the door and there she was. She was kneading honeybread over one of the oaken countertops with angry vigor. But she was silent, and the voice in my head was quiet. I must have imagined it. Or dreamt it. There was no way Cinderella would have dared express her displeasure with my sisters at the top of her lungs while they slept upstairs.
Just as I entered, the sun shone through the windows of the kitchen.
I could feel the suspicion radiating off her. It was evident in every muscle of her lithe frame—her face was purposely blank, but her muscles were tense and her moves jerky as she punished the dough with her hands, forcing it into submission. I thought I understood what she was doing. The dough was something she could control. Unlike everything else under this roof.
“What did that dough ever do to you?” I asked, trying to make light of it.
“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask your sisters?” she bit back.
“They used to be different, I promise you,” I countered emphatically.
“I didn’t ask any questions about how your friend got hurt. But I don’t need you to make a fool of me. I don’t deserve that.”
“So, it’s really just you here?” I asked. “My old place had a full staff and it was only half the size of this house.”
Cinderella was charged with doing all the cooking and cleaning for Galatea and her two “stepsisters,” which I knew must be difficult.
“Just me and my pet mouse, Perdi. The staff wanted to stay. But between my stepmother and stepsisters, there were so many new demands. They left in the middle of the night.”
“All of them?”
I wondered if Bari and Galatea had cast a spell that made them want to go. Or if it was just their pure disdain that had chased them away. Regardless, it made sense that my sisters wanted the smallest number of human eyes on them. It decreased their chances of being detected.
“I think they couldn’t bear being here without my parents. I can barely bear it myself. But this is my home.”
I wish the dishes were clean so I didn’t have to stand here with her while she defends them, Cinderella’s voice said, but her mouth was not moving. Her voice was in my head again. But how?
“Can you say that again?” I demanded, holding my ears.
“Say what?” she said, blinking up at me innocently.
“The part about the dishes,” I demanded.
“I didn’t say anything.”
I wish I knew what was wrong with me. Shame on me for thinking she’s different from the rest. I wish we had never met.
“You want to know what’s wrong with you and if I am different from the rest. You wish I’d never come here,” I said, quoting her own thoughts back to her.
“Stop doing that. Stop making fun of me on top of everything else,” she said, stepping back from the dough and taking up a broom.
“That’s not what I’m doing. I promise. I’m not like them. Just tell me if you were thinking what I said,” I demanded, needing to know.
Cinderella put down the broom and looked squarely at me.
“I hate it here. I wish I could make everything stop. I wish I never had to touch another dish again.”
Just as she finished speaking, porcelain began hurtling toward us. I pulled Cinderella to the ground. The dishes had exploded.
“What in the hells, Farrow?” she said underneath me.
For a split second I thought Cinderella had been keeping something from me—that she had magic all along.
But then I realized it—I had granted her wish.